


Photograph

by Fillyjonk



Category: Sherlock - Fandom
Genre: AU, Angst, F/M, HLV, His Last Vow, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Mycroft, S3, mary morstan - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-21 04:26:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1537493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fillyjonk/pseuds/Fillyjonk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Moriarty hadn't brought Sherlock's plane back to the tarmac.  AU, what if, post-HLV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Photograph

It was lovely, wasn't it? Full spring, and the flowers all in bloom and the neighbors out showing the world: look at us, look at our happy faces, mothers and fathers and bouncing babies and see how we love each other. Take a photograph; this will be what you want to remember.

It was lovely. 

We were there, John and I, and the baby. Teresa Little from two doors down, and her Samantha, who was born the same day as Beth. Some hulking boys shooting baskets, and a mother calling from her window, "Dinner is ready!" Three little girls in front of a lilac bush, white dresses - they'd just come from their First Communion - clapping Miss Mary Mack, their squeals of laughter. The baby perfection, all pink and gurgles. The sun on John's skin and the smell that only came from sun on skin on John. 

It was lovely. Don't try and tell me it wasn't.

The car - a black sedan - pulled up slowly, unnoticed until it was upon us. 

John's face turned from the baby, turned from me, and he said, "Shit." I felt him stiffen and pull away, rise to his feet. A man emerged from the car. Formal on this casual afternoon, pinstripe suit and well-shined shoes. Well.

Mycroft Holmes himself. I suppose I would have expected an envoy.

And odd, awkward standstill - high noon - until finally John moved forward.

"What?" John's voice, cold.

"John, would you be so good as to come with me?" Mycroft's voice was deep and gentle.

John stared at him for a moment. Mycroft stared back. No motion from either. Then John raised his right hand, made a sign as if to cut Mycroft off, as if the man had spoken. 

"No," John said. "No. Don't."

"John," Mycroft said again.

John shook his head.

"Six months. He told me - You said six months. You're never wrong. It's not been six months."

Mycroft looked at the ground, at the baby, at me. Back at John.

"I was - optimistic."

John staring straight ahead, looking past Mycroft, his chest rising and falling three times normally, and then the fourth breath heaving and strained.

"I'm not," he said, struggling to push air past his vocal cords, and I remembered that sound. "I'm not... prepared." Another forced inhalation. He tipped his head and closed his eyes. 

Mycroft closed his own eyes. Shook his head, looked up, scanned the road. 

John turned to look at me. He left hand clenched, unclenched. 

"I don't - I thought I'd be prepared."

The breath came out of me in a rush. Teresa Little put her hand on my arm. I looked at her. She was studying me, eyes wide, and I wanted to slap her then, slap the curiosity and the surprise and the thrill of tomorrow morning's tea-gossip off her face. 

John moved a half-step forward, into Mycroft's space, and took two measured breaths.

"Tell me how."

Mycroft's eyes met mine again, for an instant.

"John," Mycroft said, "Would you please get in the car? I will tell you. This... this isn't a suitable place."

"Well," John said. A cold laugh. "Of course."

He turned his eyes to me and Beth. His face was drawn, jaw clenched, a mask. l know I didn't imagine it: that his eyes were different already, changed. He shook his head.

"Mary, I've got to step out for a bit. Mycroft and I need to have a talk. This," he waved to indicate our stoop, the children, his voice a choked whisper now, "This is not a suitable place for him to tell me how his brother died."

Tears came to my eyes then, but not to John's changed eyes as he moved toward the car.

Teresa Little's baby squawled and the girls in white dresses hopscotched down the pavement and somewhere a boy cursed a missed basket. I bounced Beth and began to feel the sick, expectant unknowing. The baby's smile and the strangled voice; the sun on my face and the shuttered eyes closing behind the car door, moving away. The lovely, broken day.

**Author's Note:**

> What if Sherlock hadn't been called back from his exile after HLV? I wondered how John would hear the news that Sherlock had died in Eastern Europe. I wondered about the first moment that Mary Morstan realized her marriage was doomed. And then it occurred to me that it would be poetic if they were the exact same moment.
> 
> Dear readers, you don't know, do you? How excited an author feels when a reader takes the time to comment on a story? Oh, it is like a surprise gift in a beautiful tiny package. Like fireworks and Christmas and night swimming in August with the Beatles on the radio. 
> 
> But sending a story into the world and then not hearing anything? That is like forgotten birthdays, and blisters on the heels with miles yet to walk, and orange peel under the quick of the nail!


End file.
